Spielberg & Hanks to produce "Band of Brothers of Air War"

[Griffin]

"Joining an oeuvre that already includes 2001's Band of Brothers and 2010's The Pacific, the untitled miniseries will explore the aerial wars through the eyes of enlisted men of the Eighth Air Force -- known as the men of the Mighty Eighth. The project will use at its source material historian Donald L. Miller’s nonfiction tome Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany."

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/hbo-developing-third-wwii-miniseries-413632

[104th_Crunch]

Very cool info, thanks Griffin. I wish though the focus was on fighter aircraft as opposed to bomber crews. Still, I am sure it will be amazing. BoB and Pacific are excellent.

[FreeFall]

http://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/tom-hanks-steven-spielberg-masters-air-hbo/

[NBEagle]

http://www.slashfilm.com/steven-spielberg-and-tom-hanks-secure-source-material-for-their-third-world-war-ii-set-hbo-miniseries/

[NBEagle]

The Mighty Eighth Trailer:

 

[NBEagle]

Is this depending to the HBO miniseries, or is this a movie on its own?

[Grimes]

My understanding is that it isn't related to the HBO miniseries and its for some other project.

[NBEagle]

So my understanding is now we could get two goodies. ;)

[Flying Penguin]

Very cool info, thanks Griffin. I wish though the focus was on fighter aircraft as opposed to bomber crews. Still, I am sure it will be amazing. BoB and Pacific are excellent.

 

The problem with fighter crews is that without History Channel 'Dogfights' style blow by blow analysis its very hard to make the uninitiated viewer understand the interdependence of these guys in individual aircraft, without reducing it to Pearl Harbour style pew pew scenes. With bombers you can have Marty holding Chuck's bullet riddled body whilst he tearfully tells of his 6 daughters and asks for a message to be passed to his wife, with Marty letting out an anguished cry as Chuck dies, the crew looking on in tears.

 

TV gold.....

Edited November 15, 2013 by Flying Penguin

[OutOnTheOP]

The problem with fighter crews is that without History Channel 'Dogfights' style blow by blow analysis its very hard to make the uninitiated viewer understand the interdependence of these guys in individual aircraft, without reducing it to Pearl Harbour style pew pew scenes. With bombers you can have Marty holding Chuck's bullet riddled body whilst he tearfully tells of his 6 daughters and asks for a message to be passed to his wife, with Marty letting out an anguished cry as Chuck dies, the crew looking on in tears.

 

TV gold.....

 

The flip side of that is that with good cinematography, you can really stress how lonely and terrifying being alone in a fighter in enemy territory- like a scene where a pilot has a brief and terrifying run-in with enemy fighters he barely escapes (captured by trapping the camera-angles to in-cockpit views, liberal use of the Saving-Private-Ryan-Shakeycam, soundtrack set to sensory overload), then is separated from his flight and spends a few minutes unsuccessfully trying the radio with increasing panic (thinking something like extreme closeup of pilot; soundtrack suddenly becomes dead quiet and camera shake becomes dead still as soon as he shakes the bad guy- but the calm highlights how completely alone he is)...

 

Of course, this requires a very strong actor. Depictions of extreme loneliness can still be very effective in cinema; just look at Cast Away... or, for that matter, almost any horror movie: if they want you to identify with a character's terror, the one of the most effective ways is to isolate them.

[OutOnTheOP]

Wow.

 

That "Mighty Eighth" trailer looks horrid. The exterior scenes look laughable, and the dialog is really cliched- I suspect it's something a couple film school students put together for a project.

[Scrim]

The flip side of that is that with good cinematography, you can really stress how lonely and terrifying being alone in a fighter in enemy territory- like a scene where a pilot has a brief and terrifying run-in with enemy fighters he barely escapes (captured by trapping the camera-angles to in-cockpit views, liberal use of the Saving-Private-Ryan-Shakeycam, soundtrack set to sensory overload), then is separated from his flight and spends a few minutes unsuccessfully trying the radio with increasing panic (thinking something like extreme closeup of pilot; soundtrack suddenly becomes dead quiet and camera shake becomes dead still as soon as he shakes the bad guy- but the calm highlights how completely alone he is)...

 

Of course, this requires a very strong actor. Depictions of extreme loneliness can still be very effective in cinema; just look at Cast Away... or, for that matter, almost any horror movie: if they want you to identify with a character's terror, the one of the most effective ways is to isolate them.

 

Except that'd get old the first time they do it, and at best it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else than our lot, those who'll probably love the series anyway.

 

The way I see it is, aside from the limits they'd face with one man planes, the bombers were up from day one to the end of the war, all the way from their bases in Britain to the cities of Germany. The fighters didn't even get past Belgium for several years, and couldn't do anything else than stop the Luftwaffe from intercepting them for a very short part of the journey to the target.

[OutOnTheOP]

Except that'd get old the first time they do it, and at best it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else than our lot, those who'll probably love the series anyway.

 

Really? You don't think that the common man can identify with being alone, confused, helpless, and terrified? Funny, people that have never been in combat seemed to have no problem identifying with the characters and emotions in Band of Brothers, even though they had never been in a situation vaguely similar. The point of making good film isn't to make a specific situation that the audience knows all about, it's to evoke emotions they can understand and characters they can identify with. The audience doesn't need to know the difference between WEP and MW50, they just need to know that being separated from the group and threatened with mortal danger is terrifying. That type of situation acts on very primal emotions, and is pretty well universal.

 

As to getting old, look at the Band of Brothers series: I could say the same thing about it: "oh, geeze, they run into some Germans and shoot at each other a bunch. Man, that gets SO old after the first time". Only... it doesn't. The reason it stayed fresh was because each episode tended to run a mini-story arc around a very particular theme, emotion, or facet of humanity: an entire episode is devoted to man's unwillingness to kill other men, even when they're trying to kill you (the Blithe episode), another episode dedicated to exploring survivor's guilt (the Medic episode), etc...

 

You also seem to assume that the entire (or even a significant majority) of such a series would need to be flight scenes. This is kind of silly; I would imagine that 2/3 to 3/4 of the series would be on the ground. You have lots of potential scenes to play with there: depicting the nervousness and psychology of preparing oneself for a mission, coping with the loss of friends, the tension of waiting on the field for the flights to return (not knowing who will and will not come back)... you can even dedicate an entire episode/ story arc to a shot-down pilot being smuggled out by the French Resistance networks.

 

The way I see it is, aside from the limits they'd face with one man planes, the bombers were up from day one to the end of the war, all the way from their bases in Britain to the cities of Germany. The fighters didn't even get past Belgium for several years, and couldn't do anything else than stop the Luftwaffe from intercepting them for a very short part of the journey to the target.

 

My point is simply that there ARE interesting things you can do in cinema exploring situations of isolation. By the same token, the "hold your buddy while he dies" bit has been done to death, too.

 

So, I look at it a bit different. Even, say, a scene where the (pre-Mustang) fighters have to break off from the bombers- knowing that the Germans will pounce as soon as they leave- and watch helpless as the Luftwaffe cut them to pieces while still in sight, could make a very evocative scene. That level of frustration, helplessness, and the sense of failure are powerful stuff. What would make it a good series isn't Michael Bay planes-flying-everywhere-and-shit-exploding scenes: it's an effective use of a range of human emotion. You could quite effectively play out that scene by depicting the range of human responses: the guy that gets angry at the Germans and just loses it to his fury, the guy that gets angry with himself for failure, the guy that blows it off as just fate, the guy that begrudgingly respects the German's proficiency, the fatalist that's just glad it's not him, etc. And even in a scene depicted in a single-seat fighter, you can make this effective: as all these different responses are depicted by the voices through the radio, the camera focuses on just one pilot: the one who's just confused and doesn't know what to think about it, or for whom reality hasn't fully sunk in. It puts the audience then in the same shoes: they (at least should) identify with that guy, sorting through all these different reactions assaulting them, and figuring out how they feel about it.

 

I'm just saying that, yes, it COULD be made into a workable- and even GOOD- series

Edited November 16, 2013 by OutOnTheOP

[IvanK]

The Mighty Eighth Trailer:

 

 

Looks dreadful absolutely crap over the top CGI !